Phosphorus
by NoFootprintsInSand
Summary: Phosphorus: (Greek) - a name meaning "light-bringer" – is the Morning Star, the planet Venus in its morning appearance. Also another name for Lucifer, corrupted fallen angel.


It does something to her, to them both, that first time he violates her mind and she violates his in return. A terrible bond is forged, conjoining their souls, whispering and undulating lazily within them both, wrapping their subconscious in the tendrils of a dark bloom. Glistening petals reflecting faceted darkness, brushing against the inside of their skulls.

So warped. So beautiful.

She _hates_ it.

* * *

Their winter duel is a struggle. She is unsure and untrained, and distracted by the agony of his crippling injury and his manic internal howling. They are battered by the taint of patricide and she simultaneously loathes him and is hamstrung by his self-disgust and her own inexperience. Their rage intertwines and she is unsure where he begins and she ends, never more so than when they are chest to chest, breathing exhaustion and raw pain into each other's mouths.

When she slashes his face she slashes her own, and when the crevice opens between them she feels the agony of the earth inside her head and it's her _own_ agony and she is relieved and she hates him but the gaping wound separating them _hurts_.

She screams.

* * *

It is years before she sees him again, but they pick up right where they left off and anyway, she has felt him and he has felt her and they have shared pain and torture and schooling with galaxies and light years between them. All this time they were never really separated at all and now she is going to kill him.

It makes her feel joyous.

It makes her feel lost.

* * *

He always fights her with his mask off. Like their first time.

She wishes he would not.

Winter worlds. Desert worlds. Meadow worlds and mountain worlds and summer worlds and rain worlds. It is all the same to them as over and over they move around each other, twirl together in a frenzied dance of death. This ballet of theirs remains the same, even as the backdrops and their own faces change.

The boyishness has been burnt from him now ( _oh and she dread to think_ how _even though she_ knows), his cheeks are lined, chin and forehead severe, eyes spitting hellfire and the scar she gave him traversing it all like a roadmap of rippling madness. Yet his mouth still maintains an element of softness; there is something fleetingly tender in the curve of his upper lip. His curls too are soft when they blow around his face, almost _distracting_ her from her quest to cleave his heart in two and _end_ this.

And she, she has not looked in a mirror for a long while now. But she _feels_ harder.

Her heart feels like flint.

* * *

It goes on like this forever but not really long at all. Skirmishes and explosions, bombs and battles, his voice ploughing furrows across her sanity and people snuffing out in tiny pieces all around them.

War is so _ugly_.

And she is tilting further and falling more wildly around him, she begins to crave the sensation of his volatility and reckless rage coiled behind her eyes. She cannot even begin to imagine what the fragment of her trapped within his mind is doing to _him_. He must hate it. Hate her.

She is fine with that.

* * *

She starts to miss him when he is not in front of her or behind her trying to run her through. Even though, really, he is always there, restlessly prowling the edges of her mind, a furious caged beast trying to escape.

Just as she is constantly rattling the bars of her prison inside him.

But at this stage, this far into insanity, if they could, would they actually break free?

She does not even _know_.

* * *

What she _does_ know is that she is irrevocably corrupted the day she kills for him. It is just a foot soldier getting a lucky jump ( _just a foot soldier? oh no no nononono)_ , sure, but it is _her_ foot soldier, on _her_ side and she _kills_ because otherwise her demon (her _knight_ ) would be ripped from her insides and that, that thought is _unbearable_.

He looks at her, meets her stricken eyes, and he smiles and his teeth are bloody and his eyes wild. He bows his thanks, just a mocking tilt of neck, then turns and leaves her weeping in the mud.

 _Until next time, little Light-bringer_ , whispers through her mind, a caress he purposefully makes so soothing and so cruel that she wants to vomit.

She despises herself for her sick anticipation ( _"until next time"_ ) even as she cradles the crushed soldier's head in her lap.

She did this.

* * *

They are addicts now and it is no surprise to her when one day he kisses her instead of attempting to decapitate her.

It is probably no surprise to him either.

And anyway, they rut like they are still trying to kill each other. Bruises blossom along the path his hands take on her skin, and she bites him so he bleeds. Strands of his hair are torn loose and wound round her fingers, and his eyes burn in delight when she whimpers in ecstasy and pain.

It is yet another fight that neither of them will win. As usual.

Afterwards she does not even have energy left to feel disgusted.

* * *

She has lost count of how many times now but it is not like it matters. They lie twisted together on the wet ground, and her fingers are stroking that place of him, her favourite place, that soft spot where hip meets groin, and she can feel his fleeting, weary contentment stirring inside her. Or maybe it is hers. She does not know any longer.

"Promise me something."

It is so rare that he speaks to her out loud that she turns to meet his eyes even though she hardly ever meets his eyes outside of trying to kill him.

"What?"

It is like he has read her mind and, of course, he probably _has_. "Promise that you will be the one to end me."

She wants to laugh in his face but she can sense his sincerity sliding across that treacherous patch of black ice in her psyche. So instead she feels wetness like blood in her eyes.

He looks away then, sharp and to the side, as if her tears are heinous to him, as if he suddenly can see all of her spectres dancing in her hair and he just cannot stand the sight. But of course not, not when he can see straight into her brain and her soul, not when he is chained, snarling and furious, in there, in her. _With_ her. He already knows everything. Her ghosts are his ghosts and his are hers and some they even share ( _"Father."_ ) and there is no closing up or shutting out and the violation feels like acid and like a cool hand soothing their burning brows.

Suddenly the _why?_ that is echoing inside her and between them is unimportant. She _knows_ , of course she knows, and he knows too. Knows exactly what they are. _Who_ they are.

Fuck him. Damn her.

Damn them both.

"I promise. Yes, I promise. And you, for me?"

He does not voice his agreement out loud but it echoes like triumph in her mind. Something sets the shackles that bind them together alight and for one insane moment she sees exactly what they could be were they not on opposing sides. And if what they are _together_ were not so inherently _wrong_.

So fundamentally against nature.

No wonder he wishes them both dead.

He touches her cheek in a parody of gentleness. He looks almost sad and she knows that he has seen it too.

 _Go now. I cannot bear your face any longer._

So she goes.

* * *

It is even more desperate and cruel after that, when they come together. She digs her nails too hard into him when she kisses him and he is bruising her ribs when he holds her still underneath him.

She likes it that way.

* * *

And then, then it ends.

* * *

Even death refuses to touch his face, will not soften it, and so it is still made of granite and furrows and fury. She wants to hold him to her, stroke his ice cold brow and howl to the heavens like a woman deranged, scratch her face and tear her heart straight out of her chest. She wants to avenge him ( _who did this who did this I will_ crush _you I promised him it would be_ me _I promised)_. She does none of this. There is no time. Battle rages around her and she has time for nothing more than a quick brush of his curls as she steps over his broken body on her way to more slaughter.

Because she broke her promise to him and he broke his to her and anyway if he is gone she is gone. She probes the echoing space inside her where he used to be. He has not been cut cleanly from her. The edges of the wound are torn and raw and bleeding, and the gangrene, the rot, is already setting in. Spreading. She hates him and she loves him and without him in there she will not have long. She does not _want_ to have long.

She will finish this.


End file.
